Scorpio Invasion Read Free Page A

the girls, seeing this garden empty, would realize I hadn’t had time to cross to the opposite gate and therefore know I’d gone through here. In that case... I slid the bolt firmly, snicking it into its socket with a click.
    I turned around. The walls in this garden were completely bare of the vegetation of all kinds that graced the walls of the other gardens. The whole expanse was covered in coarse gravel of a reddish orange tint. In the centre stood a brick fountain with water gushing up and falling into a stone basin. A number of indentations here and there over the gravel thickened near the fountain. Each little scoop looked to be the size of a large animal’s hoof, and the further indentations around the central one looked unmistakably and unpleasantly like the mark of giant claws.
    The only other exit in this walled garden lay opposite and in the centre of the wall. The door stood wide open. I crossed to it.
    To have rushed in through the open doorway would have been highly foolish. I loosened one of my swords and, leaning against the wall, poked an eyeball around the edge of the doorway. This garden looked perfectly normal. Perhaps there were a few more trees than usual and more pretty little birds, otherwise the flowers banked in profusion and the air was filled with their perfume. I took a breath and stepped past the edge of the doorway. At the side an opening had been formed. This was a double wall, creating a long alleyway between the gardens. The alleyway was floored in the same reddish orange gravel. Also, I had not failed to notice the size of this doorway, and the width of the alley between the walls convinced me the animal who lived here and was brought here to drink was of a considerable size.
    I shoved my sword back firmly in the scabbard and prowled on.
    So far I’d managed to avoid the cluster of roofs visible over the walls. Red tiled roofs, with flat terrace and balcony connecting features, they seemed to me to denote that this place was a luxurious country villa. In that, of course, I could be wildly wrong. By the movement of the twin suns I saw I was in the northern hemisphere of Kregen again. All these walled gardens would appear to indicate I was still in the continent of Loh.
    From these conclusions and from what had happened to me since I’d arrived it was now quite clear just where I was. Whilst it is no doubt a splendid and magnificent thing to die young for some great cause, it is, as San Blarnoi points out, far more comfortable to support the great cause without getting killed. And, as the soldier poet Kapt Larghos the Lame observes in his military rhythms, you can get just as dead in a petty skirmish as you can in a full-scale battle. He should know — he got himself killed in an ambush fifteen hundred seasons ago.
    The need at the moment was to find the outside wall and go either through a gateway or over the wall and get clear of these gardens. They were highly unhealthy — for unwanted men.
    Going on cautiously I crossed three more enclosed spaces of flowers. Apart from that mad dash to the left away from the arrows, I believed I’d kept to a straight line. Unless the villa possessed grounds of enormous extent I ought to be nearing the outer wall, surely, for the sweet sake of Opaz?
    Or, perhaps I was running along this series of gardens parallel to the outer wall? “By the Black Chunkrah!” I said to myself. “That is not one of your more helpful notions, Dray Prescot.”
    The next garden contained a pool clearly designed for people to go swimming. The place was deserted, but from beyond the far wall floated the happy sounds of laughter and the clink of glasses. I stopped and listened. You may believe me when I say I listened most carefully, most carefully indeed, by Krun!
    Over in the jungles of South Pandahem we’d encountered the Cabaret Plant. This little beauty grew in the form of a large gourd with tendrils. It had the happy knack of making sounds as of a party to lure